After the signature of
the Armistice between Allied forces and Germany that took place on November 11,
1918, in the town of Rethondes, 100 miles north of Paris,
Paris, which had never been occupied
by the German army, returned to a normal way of life. The only difference was the
overwhelming presence of foreign troups that visited Paris. Also, because of the
victory there was a very positive sprit of joy, celebration and renewed faith in
the future that contrasted with the gloom and pessimism of the war years.
People were eager to enjoy themselves and, in particular, the presence of English, Canadian
and American troups introduced a new passion for everything English to the great
sorrow of "traditional Frenchmen", like Marcel Proust that were longing for a
return to past, not for a new uncharted era. Traditional
French "apéritif" of the afternoon,. usually a sweet wine, was soon replaced by
the drinks of the "happy hour": in particular whisky, gin, tonic, seltzer, etc.
Black US soldiers had discovered a new form of personal freedom while integrated
in the French army, they had learned French and many of them decided to
stay in France
rather than
return to a segregated US (cf. Josephine Baker's song : "J'ai deux amours"). Thus many black shows started in Paris, in particular
in the area that was fast becoming the main place for artists and intellectuals: Montparnasse.
Under the terms of the Traité de Versailles, Germany was supposed to pay much
compensation to France for the damages caused to the northern provinces by the
German war machine. Immediately that produced an economic boom that will be so
strong that it will cushion in France the consequences of the American crash of
1929. Because the US Senate refused to approve the Ligue des Nations suggested
by the US President Wilson, it was established in Geneva and Europe, again felt
that it was the center of the western civilization. A new civilization of
leisure started to appear in Paris that soon was nicknamed "city of pleasure"
where life was good. Women have been in charge of many stores and factories
while the men were at the front. They have earned a new place in the productive
society as secretary,
factory employees; they have a new financial independence and they have "new
look" desire for fashion better adapted to their now casual life style (Coco
Chanel); they also constitute an large pool for modeling (pictures, painting)
since t is not impossible for woman to live single life outside of the
traditional family unit. French society is changing dramatically with the
arrival of cars, planes and highly mechanized factories. Many foreign
intellectuals and artists come to Paris in search of fame and patronage and soon
Paris, its new "American" cafés with fancy cocktails and large terrasses
extensions on the sidewalks,
its glittering night-clubs, its exotic dance halls, its hedonist everyday life,
becomes more than ever a bustling art center and a magnet for a new artistic
generation rich of dreams and hope (Calder, Chagall, Miro, Charchoune,
Giacometti, Soulages, Foujita, Brancusi). That period was aptly called
"The banquet years" for its seemingly endless parties.

Since
1909, the main avant-garde poet, writer, and intellectual had been Guillaume
Apollinaire (1880-1918). He was born Guillaume Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky
and is believed to be the illegitimate son of Polish demi-mondaine Angelica de
Kostrowitzky, and a Swiss-Italian aristocrat, Francesco Flugi d'Aspermont.
He received a French education at the Collège Saint-Charles in Monaco.
1900 Apollinaire moved to Paris for Exposition Universelle and settled there.
While working in a bank, he wrote poetry and articles for the well established
trendy magazine of the time. In 1903 he created his own magazine called
ironically Le Festin d'Esope, since he had no money to buy food, he had
to feed himself with "words" just like the greek philosopher. Very early, he met
writers and painters that were part of the bohemian sub-culture of Montmartre
(Le Bateau-lavoir) and he became the friend of Pablo Picasso, André Derain,
playwright Alfred Jarry, and the
painter Marie Laurencin, who was his lover. Because he had been raised as a
tri-lingual speaker (French, German, Italian) in 1901-02 he accepted a
position of tutor in the Rhineland where he found the time to write and
edited where he edited his first published book of poetry. When he came back he
resumed his social life and became truly interested in the post-impressionist
painting and the development of cubism that he adopted and adapted to
literature. He brought Picasso and Braque together, and was always involved in
the world of modern painting; for example he helped organize the cubist room 41
at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911. His first prose work,
L'Enchanteur pourrissant, was published in 1909 with woodcuts by André
Derain (the favorite French avant-garde painter of De Zayas),
it was the first direct collaboration with the art merchant Henry Kahnweiler who will progressively
dominate dominate the market of Dada and Surrealism painting for
most of the XXth-Century with galeries in Paris (Louise Leiris) and New
York (Isselbacher). With the publication of Alcools in 1913
Apollinaire was recognized as a highly original voice in contemporary poetry.
Le Bestiaire was published in 1911 with woodcuts by Raoul Dufy, and was
later set to music by Francis Poulenc, a disciple of Satie, the Dada composer.
By then Cubism was the recognized leading artistic movement and Apollinaire
wrote The Cubist Painters, "which explored the theory of cubism and
analyzed psychologically the chief cubists and their works. According to
Apollinaire, art is not a mirror held up to nature, so cubism is basically
conceptual rather than perceptual. By means of the mind, one can know the
essential transcendental reality that subsists "beyond the scope of nature." Ten
days after the appearance of the book, Apollinaire deserted cubism for Orphism.
The concept was also invented by him and described "the art of painting new
structures out of elements that have not been borrowed from the visual sphere
but have been created entirely by the artist himself, and have been endowed by
him with the fullness of reality." Among Orphicist artist were Robert Delaunay,
Fernand Léger, and, in a way, Francis Picabia.

His personal love affairs with Louise de Coligny, Madeleine Pagès, and
Jacqueline Kolb, whom he married in 1918, were as much sensational topics as
Hollywood stars are now for tabloids. His large collection of African art,
something not yet fashionable, was also a matter of public concern since he was
calling his African sculpures the " The Crists of other beliefs".
In 1911 he had been detained for a week on suspicion of stealing Leonardo's
Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum for publicity reasons. In 1914 the painter
Giorgio de Chirico (who influenced Ernst) made two paintings in tribute to
Apollinaire; in Portrait of Apollinaire as a Premonition the poet uses
sunglasses - like all visionaries he is blind.
Tired to be discredited as a "foreigner" by the popular press, in 1914
Apollinaire decided to become a French citizen. As the war was starting he
enlisted in the infantry. He fought on the front in the apocalyptic Marne battle
until 1916, when he received a head wound and was hospitalized for a while.
During his convalescence in Paris he continued to arrange new art exhibits and
published poetry. In 1916 he published Le Poète assassiné, in 1917
he staged his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breast of Tiresias). In
the "Foreword" of the play he used the word "surrealist", to describe the nature
of the story. At the time the term did not attract special attention, however,
in 1924, it will become used by Yvan Goll and, later, by André Breton, to label
the new artistic movement that will follow Dada. In the play Apolliniare
combined his own sexual obsessions with a sur-realist vision of the world in an
historic and mythic prospective. The Breast of Tiresias was made into an
opera (1947) by Francis Poulenc. In 1917, he gave a major speech called "Sur
l'esprit nouveau" in which he summarized his idea for a new post war estheticism
and issued a call to investigate new worlds of expression based on the new
mechaninal means of expression (cinema, sound recording, etc.) now at the
disposal of a new generation of artists. In 1918, a few months before his death
he published the experimental poetry volume Calligrammes
that
offers stunning "graphic" poems that associate words and spatial form to create
the poetic significance of the piece; this great creative experiment will be
echoed in the typographic experiments of Dada all over the world. By the time of
his death, Apollinaire was in working contact with Tzara, Ernst, Stieglitz,
Duchamp, Picabia, etc. On November 9, 1918 Apollinaire died of influenza
in the great epidemic of that year. Immediately, André Breton, Tristan Tzara,
Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon and other French poets of the younger generation
recognized his as a extraordinary intellectual innovator and visionary and were
eagers to be perceived as his intellectual heirs on the path of a new modernist
definition of art.

André
Breton (1896-1966): French poet, essayist, critic, and editor,
chief promoter and one of the founders in December 1924 of the Freudian Surrealist movement with Paul Eluard,
Louis Aragon, Michel Leiris, Antonin Artaud, Bataille, etc. He was later (1929)
joined by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, among
others. Breton cofounded with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault
the review Littérature in 1918 with the help of the traditionalist
French Poet Paul Valéry. MD by training he specialized in psychoanalysis and was
posted during wartime in a MASH unit on the eastern front where the fight was
the most ferocious (Bar-le-Duc). During that time he was able to observe the
psychological damages caused by battle fatigue and battle trauma. Before the war
he had met Sigmund Freud in Vienna , during the war very important for his
literary work was his meetings with Apollinaire. He was in early contact with
Tzara in Zurich in 1917 and 1918 and when Tzara came to Paris he offered to him
to be the editor-in-chief of Litterature. Tzara accepted and Littérature
became the first official Dada journal in Paris. The editorial membership of the
jornal with the help of Picabia became the nucleus of the Paris Dadaist group;
Personal conflict with Tzara led Breton to abandon the Dadaist movement and to
seek another intellectual venture. It turned out to be Surrealism and his first
MANIFESTE DU SURRÉALISME
was published in 1924. Influenced by psychoanalytical theories Breton defined
Surrealism as a dictation of the unconscious realms and gave great importance to
play of words, signification of dream and chance encounters of opposite
realities in the everyday world. After 1927 he gave priority to the
social action of art and excluded many early surrealists from the movement.

Louis Aragon ( 1897- 1982). Illegitimate
son of an upper class Paris family, Aragon is given a false identity and a false
place of birth (Madrid). Exempted from military service during the war for
reasons of poor health, in 1916 he starts to study medicine. At the
university he meets Breton and he is attracted to literature and poetry.
In 1917 Aragon wrote his first book Alcide ou De l'Esthétique du saugrenu.
Apollinaire reads the piece and asks him to do the review of his new play
Les Mammelles de Tirésias. Aragon is required to serve his country during
war time. He is placed in the same medical unit as Breton. In 1918 he is told
the truth about his birth and who his real parents are. He requests his transfer
to a fighting unit at the front. Three times he is believed dead; he will lead
several heroic rescue missions and will be decorated for his actions. He
continues his relationship with Breton and the publishing house of Gallimard. In
1918 he co-found Littérature. After the Armistice he stays with the
French army that occupies Germany (Sarre), while Breton and Soupault are editing
Littérature. He is demobilized in 1919 and returns to Paris to complete
his medical studies. He will publish the second most important Dada/pré-surréalist
text of that period:
"Une
vague de rêves". He will receive his diploma in December 1920. From January
1920 (Tzara arrives in Paris) to October 1922 Aragon will be one of the most
active Paris Dadaist. In december 1920, he and Breton decide to become members of
the Communist Party that has just been created. They both want to introduce
"fresh air" in French literature.

Philippe Soupault (1897-1990). Born in a
bourgeois family of Paris he was attracted to literature and became a
member of the group of young writers attached to Apollinaire, the so-called
"cubist poets": Cendrars, Jacob, Reverdy. In that entourage he also met
Breton and his friends: Frankel and Aragon; later he met Eluard and he was aware
of Vaché who he had met at the première of Les Mammelles de Tirésias.
With Breton and Aragon he founded the journal Littérature . While
Aragon was at the army, he and Breton edited Littérature and
co-wrote the first FRench text that can be considered as a "Dada" text -later
considered "proto-surrealist" -- Les champs magnétiques. As Breton soon
Soupault will became a friend of Picabia and will share Breton interest for
Tzara in Zurich. In 1920 when Tzara comes to Paris, he will approve the
take over of Littérature by Tzara. He will write two ore pieces with
Breton
"Vous m'oublierez", et "S'il vous plaît";
both texts will be introduced with a foreword by Picabia (1920).
Later he and Vaché will became less close to Breton, being replaced by two
"older" figures, Picabia and Tzara; Vaché will kill himself and Soupault will
devote his time to travel, writings and journalism. He will keep his frienship
with Breton during the period 1921-1924, he will become a Breton Surréalist in
1924 and be an active surréalist and a prolific propagandist for the group,
He will be excluded from Surréalisme in 1926 with Bataille, Leiris, Vitrac,
Artaud, etc. for "too much literature".

Paul
Eluard (1895-1952) Paul Éluard came from a lower-middle-class background. He
was born in Saint-Denis, Paris, the son of a bookkeeper, whose wife helped out
with the household bills by dressmaking. Éluard became interested in poetry in a
Swiss sanatorium, where he was sent at the age of 16 for treatment of
tuberculosis. When he returned to France, he joined the army and was badly
injured by gas. His first noteworthy volume of poetry, LE DEVOIR ET L'INQUIÉTUDE,
appeared in 1917. Éluard was involved with the Dada Movement, meeting Tristan
Tzara, André Breton, and other member of surrealist and Dadaist circles. Like
Breton, Aragon, Péret, Soupault and other intellectuals, Éluard had emerged from
the war disgusted and rejected commonly accepted laws and morality, offering
instead radical nihilism. Appearing in 1921was his statements in verse that
prepared the surrealist theories (1924)and activities , LES NÉCESSITÉS DE LA VIE
ET LA CONSÉQUENCE DES RÊVES. In 1924 Éluard mysteriously disappeared.
Rumours of his death were widely circulated and finally accepted as true. After
seven months he appeared and explained that he had been on a journey from
Marseilles to Tahiti, Indonesia, and Ceylon. The journey was later connected
with the loss of his wife Gala to the surrealist artist Salvador Dali. His
reputation as a poet was established with the publication of CAPITALE DE LA
DOULEUR (1926).

Eluard died of a heart condition on November 18, 1952 in Charenton-le-Pont.

Georges
Ribemont-Dessaignes (Montpellier, 1884-1975 Saint-Jeannet). French writer
and painter trained in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie
Julian. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. His early works were
influenced by the Nabis, but most are lost. In 1909 he met Raymond
Duchamp-Villon, through whom he became acquainted with the Puteaux group, which
included artists such as Léger, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes and others. Two
years later he met Picabia. From 1913 he painted very little, but in 1920 he
began to produce mechanomorphic paintings like Picabia’s. Often these were
painted on the back of earlier works, such as the Great Musician (1920), which
was owned by André Breton and had a Nabi-style work of 1905 on the back. After
World War I he collaborated with Picabia on the Dada journal 391 and soon became
an important figure in Parisian Dada. He also contributed to several other Dada
reviews, such as Dada, Mécano and Proverbe, and wrote various Dada plays. His
Dada masterpiece, L’Empereur du Chine, was written in 1916 and Le
Serin muet was performed at the first Dada soirée in February 1920.